Hopkins camp keys students in to forensics

Teens learn pros, and cons, of hacking

Bill Dent, special agent with U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations, looks at the computer of Wootton High student Sumouni Basu, 15, of Rockville during a Digital Forensics Summer Camp at Johns Hopkins University's Shady Grove campus in Rockville.

Some teens spend their summer vacations at camp learning how to ride horses or build campfires. This summer, 13 teens are learning how to hack into computers and crack passwords.

Stenography and data encryption are on the agenda at the Digital Forensics Summer Camp at Johns Hopkins University's Shady Grove campus, where high school students learn about the field of computer investigation.

The teens learned techniques to recover data from electronic and digital media during the one-week camp. Along the way, they learned some of the tricks of the trade and the legal ramifications of using them.

"I would like to go into computer security," said Sarabeth Jaffe, 16, a rising junior at Thomas Wootton High School, who plans to study computer science in college.

When asked about the possibility of hacking into computers with the information she was learning, Sarabeth seemed surprised.

"Only for good, not for evil," she said after a brief pause.

Students from across the county attended the session conducted by digital forensic specialists Bill Dent, a special agent with the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and Paul Bicknell, senior computer forensic analyst at the Department of Defense cyber crime center.

The students learned how to crack passwords, bury secret messages within programs and find data hiding within data.

"If you were hiding something from your parents, you could send it to your friends," said Katie Seong, 17, who will be a junior at Wootton.

The most interesting part of the class for Jeffrey Archer, 19, a recent Montgomery Blair High School graduate, was getting into files on the hard drive that have been deleted.

Sumouni Basu, 15, who will be a junior at Wootton, also was surprised deleted files could be retrieved.

"Most crimes today are not spur of the moment; they [usually] have computer involvement even if it is just an e-mail, so computer investigation becomes a part of it." said camp director John Baker.

The summer program is in its second year at the Johns Hopkins Rockville campus. It grew from eight students last year to 13 this year. The school plans to offer digital forensics for high school students next year, Baker said. Tuition for the week-long camp is $300. Students had to have a GPA of 2.5 or better and have taken a computer applications course to be considered for the camp.

"We started it to get [students] interested in STEM  science, technology, engineering and mathematics  but more specifically, computer science," Baker said. "But we won't know the success of that for a few years. They are only in high school."

Exit surveys from students showed quite a number of them got turned on to computer forensics, prompting Baker to say: "Holy cow, there is a whole lot here."